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Transit Officials Ask Congress for Billions in Storm Aid

WASHINGTON — It will cost more than $7 billion to repair the damage that Hurricane Sandy did to the New York area’s antiquated transit systems and billions more to upgrade the systems to withstand major storms in the future, officials from the region told a United States Senate panel on Thursday.

The subway stations, tunnels and tracks managed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the nation’s largest public transportation system, sustained the worst of the destruction, with estimated damage of more than $5 billion, Joseph J. Lhota, the authority’s chairman said.

“This figure represents just what we need to get the system back to where it was the day before the storm,” Mr. Lhota said. Stressing that the region is relying on transportation networks that in some cases are more than a century old, Mr. Lhota and other transportation officials from New York and New Jersey said that it would cost substantially more to upgrade the systems to make them better prepared for storms that could come more frequently, and with greater intensity, with climate change and rising sea levels. “It’s critical that we make the critical investments we need to protect our system from future storms,” Mr. Lhota said.

Securing money beyond the cost of immediate repairs could be difficult at a time when Congress and the Obama administration are jockeying over tax increases and spending cuts, the so-called fiscal cliff.

New York and New Jersey lawmakers testifying before a Senate Transportation Committee panel urged Congress to invest in transit infrastructure in the region, which accounts for more than 10 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product and depends on mass transit more than any other area of the country.

“It’s the life blood of New York,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, told the panel.

Mr. Lhota did not provide an estimate of how much more would be needed to upgrade the systems, but other speakers did.

James Weinstein, executive director of New Jersey Transit, provided the most detailed account yet of damage sustained by that system. The agency, he said, sustained an estimated $400 million in damage and would need $800 million more to make the system more resilient to future storms.

The damage included more than $100 million in damaged rail equipment, including rolling stock, and an additional $300 million to fix and replace tracks, wires, signaling, electrical substations and other equipment, Mr. Weinstein said.

New Jersey Transit has come under intense criticism from riders and officials for parking more than 300 passenger cars and locomotives in rail yards in Hoboken and Kearny that ended up under water during the storm.

But the Senate panel largely spared Mr. Weinstein of having to defend the agency’s actions on Thursday. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat and panel member who called the hearing, briefly raised the issue, but then seemed content to accept Mr. Weinstein’s defense that it was the best decision based on forecasts and flood histories of the two locations at the time.

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“It doesn’t sound like there were a lot of choices to be made,” Mr. Lautenberg said.

Mr. Weinstein could face tougher questioning next week in front of a hearing before the transportation committee of the New Jersey Assembly.

Joseph Boardman, the president of Amtrak, said the regional carrier was requesting $336 million in emergency federal funding. Of that amount, $60 million would be used to cover estimated operating costs caused by the storm, which flooded four of Amtrak’s seven tunnels leading in and out of New York’s Pennsylvania Station and damaged a major electrical substation in Kearny.

The remaining $276 million would be used to make improvements to strengthen the system. It would also be used to begin design and construction of Amtrak’s plan to add two new tunnels under the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.

“But clearly our needs are enormous,” he said. “We are facing hundreds of millions of dollars in immediate repair costs, and billions more in mitigation and resiliency measures.”

The authority sustained substantial damage in addition to its airports, shipping terminals and tunnels, Mr. Foye said. But the Port Authority Trans-Hudson transit system, which carries some 77 million people between New Jersey and Manhattan each year, was hit the worst.

The PATH’s Hoboken Terminal, which serves about 29,000 people every weekday, remains closed, and officials have not given an estimate of when service will be fully restored.

A version of this article appears in print on December 7, 2012, on Page A32 of the New York edition with the headline: Transportation Officials Ask Congress for Billions in Storm Recovery Effort. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe